Other apps offer TTS. But Voice Dream Reader also comes with wonderful navigational and annotative capabilities as well as a rich assortment of voices. It’s integrated with DropBox, Google Drive and EverNotes, and you can even download to it directly from Project Gutenberg

Now—some great news: Voice Dream Reader for Android will enter Beta in a few days and should be in the Apple Store at the start of August.

That said, my love of Voice Dream Reader itself endures. Now Winston has added to Reader’s considerable allure with the inclusion of Sharon, a female voice from Acapela in fairly realistic U.S. English. I tried it, and it’s well worth the $4.99 I paid to add it to Voice Dream. “You have to hear it to believe it,” Winston writes. ”It is a big download at 400 MB and it takes more computing power to run it than other voices. You need to have iPhone 5S or above, iPad 3 or above, and at least 800 MB storage available for downloading and unzipping.”

In other good news, Voice Dream has taken on Michael Scott, full time, for such purposes as working on the Android version of Voice Dream Reader. Next on the list? Well, my own wish is that Voice Dream offer inter-device, inter-platform synching so you can effortlessly resume where you left off in the book you’re reading at the moment. The addition of Adobe DRM also would be good. I dislike DRM, but I’d love for library patrons, especially those with disabilities, to be able to use Voice Dream when borrowing books. This would also expand the range of retail choices. Still, the sooner we can replace the existing reader-hostile DRM with either social DRM or no DRM for retail purposes, the better. DRM in effect turns an open format like ePub into a proprietary one. But enough on that. Check out Voice Dream if you have not already.

Detail: Of all the voice available to purchase within the Voice Dream app, the U.K.-accented Peter remains my favorite. For me at least, he sounds even more natural than Sharon.

And another detail: I consider the Reader to be safe for driving. I use it then, and also at times when exercising. Listening to an e-book does not offer the same level of cognitive distractions that the composition of e-mail does.

Interactive book apps may not yet have set the world on fire, but there is at least one place for them—as an adjunct to video games. On January 28, 2015, Industrial Toys LLC released Midnight Rises, an interactive graphic novel application for iOS. The e-comic serves as a prelude to Midnight Star, a mobile shooter game which Industrial Toys LLC released for iOS today. (Both applications are expected to come to Android “sometime soon.”)

Midnight Rises was written by John Scalzi, with art by Mike Choi and music by Serj Tankian. The first chapter is free; the next two are 99 cents each via in-app purchases. (One reader reported the second chapter was free in exchange for a Facebook share.) Additional cover art is also available for $1.99. The comic is interactive, with pan effects on panels and branching plotlines for the reader to explore. It tells the story of human contact with aliens, and a science ship, the Joplin, dispatched to investigate an anomaly and ending up stranded far from home.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the interactivity is that the comic app also interacts with the Midnight Star game—your choices in the choose-your-own-adventure story affect the way the game plays out. Scalzi explains:

This is one of those “capabilities of the mobile platform” things — In the story we’ve put places for you to explore and to make choices for Charlie Campbell. If you play Midnight Star, the game will talk to the graphic novel, see the choices and explorations you’ve made, and tweak things in the game to reflect those choices. There’s no downside to any exploration — you’re not penalized for one choice or another, including the choice to simply read through the story. It just means that when you play the game, it’s personalized for you. Which is kind of cool, and again, something that reflects that both the graphic novel and the game are built for the mobile experience, not just on phones and tablets.

Since neither app is yet available for Android, I cannot yet try them out for myself. However, they seem to be getting some good reviews—and since they’re written by Scalzi, they should at the very least have an engaging story with memorable characters. If you’ve tried one or the other for yourself, let me know what you think.

That’s the thrust of a piece in Wired that talks about how the smartphone has been a godsend for long-form written journalism. Where people used to read their newspapers on the subway, now they read their smartphones—and despite the predictions of those who said such devices would destroy our attention span, the evidence is pretty good that smartphone users are able to concentrate enough to read articles thousands of words long in one go.

The Atlantic recently reported that a gorgeously illustrated 6,200-word story on BuzzFeed—which likewise gets about half its readers through mobile devices—not only received more than a million views, it held the attention of smartphone users for an average of more than 25 minutes. (WIRED’s in-depth web offerings have also attracted audiences. A profile of a brilliant Mexican schoolgirl garnered 1.2 million views, 25 percent of them from phones, and readers spent an average of 18 minutes on it.)

It probably won’t surprise those folks who remember how, before and even in the early days of the Kindle, the iPhone was the e-book device of choice. If people will read e-books on smartphones, why wouldn’t they read longer news articles? (And for that matter, vice versa.)

This has led to various innovative journalism startups aimed at bringing bigger stories to smaller devices, leveraging social media in helping readers discover new things to read. (Though some of those have been around a while, too.)

So, yes, even in this era of the Kindle and the tablet, the small screen of the smartphone is still not too small for reading. And that’s probably not going to change.

]]>http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/smartphone-size-no-obstacle-to-long-reading/feed/4iBooks to be included with every iOS 8 device; will the DoJ take notice?http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/ibooks-to-be-included-with-every-ios-8-device-will-the-doj-take-notice/
http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/ibooks-to-be-included-with-every-ios-8-device-will-the-doj-take-notice/#commentsThu, 05 Jun 2014 11:05:12 +0000http://www.teleread.com/?p=114149

This might not seem like a big deal at first—iBooks has, after all, been available for four years to anyone who wants to download it—but never underestimate the laziness barrier. People who weren’t that “into” e-books might never have bothered to grab it on their own, but if it was put right there in front of them they might go ahead and use it and even buy books from it. As Coker rightly points out, that’s big news for anyone who sells via the iBooks store (including, naturally, Smashwords).

But that doesn’t necessarily mean everything will be wine and roses. Nate Hoffelder notes on The Digital Reader that this could invite more anti-trust scrutiny on Apple, just as Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with Windows did for Microsoft. What’s more, Apple charges a 30% vig to any e-book or other media e-tailer who wants to include a media store within its application—giving iBooks a distinct advantage since it’s Apple’s own store and it doesn’t have to charge that extra 30% to itself. (Microsoft, at least, didn’t charge the makers of other web browsers money to let them run just as well on Windows as IE.)

Smartphones might be good for e-reading, but soon they’ll be able to read your face, too.

Remember the uproar when Facebook announced plans to add face recognition identity tagging to its photos? It turned out only to be meant to tag people who you’d friended already, but to hear most people you’d have thought they were going to have their identities revealed to total strangers.

Well, CNET Australia now reports on a forthcoming app for Android, iOS, and Google Glass that could reveal your identity to total strangers. Called NameTag, the app will allow users to snap photos and then run them through a facial-recognition database to find that person’s social media profile (and, in the US, whether they’re on the National Sex Offender Registry and other criminal databases).

"I believe that this will make online dating and offline social interactions much safer and give us a far better understanding of the people around us," said FacialNetwork’s Kevin Alan Tussy. "It’s much easier to meet interesting new people when we can simply look at someone, see their Facebook, review their LinkedIn page or maybe even see their dating site profile. Often we were interacting with people blindly or not interacting at all. NameTag on Google Glass can change all that."

At present, Google doesn’t allow face-recognition apps into the Glass app store, but it’s always possible that could change. Even if the app doesn’t make it into app stores, you can still easily install third-party apps to Android, and I’d expect Glass to have the same gateway-in-the-walled-garden philosophy when it goes live. At least with smartphones you can easily tell when someone is snapping a photo of you.

The app will operate under an opt-out philosophy rather than opt-in. (Which makes sense from a usability perspective; the more inclusive the database is, the more useful the app will be, and almost nobody would bother to opt into something like this.) Expect it to be controversial, and perhaps to be the target of privacy lawsuits, who knows.

Of course, when you get right down to it, if there’s one thing the NSA scandals have reinforced it’s that any kind of real privacy we enjoy on the Internet is illusory. Now some people can not only tell you are a dog, but what your pedigree is. Maybe it’s good to have something like this out in the open as a reminder to us to be careful what we post on the Internet. I’m honestly surprised nobody’s floated an app like this already; smartphones and the Internet have been around for how long?

As Matthew Panzarino points out on TechCrunch, it seems unlikely that any money they get out of this even if they win will be enough to slow Blackberry’s slide into obscurity as it is eclipsed by both iOS and Android devices.

Here’s a GigaOm article by Kevin C. Tofel looking at why smartphones are getting bigger and bigger, in seeming reversal of the trend of technology making things constantly smaller. It used to be that the iPhone’s 3.5” screen was considered the ideal size for smartphones. The iPhone was made that size because it was the largest the phone could be for most people to be able to reach all corners of the screen with their thumb when holding it in their hand.

But screen size crept up to 4 inches, now 5-inch screens are considered normal for many people. The Sony Xperia Z Ultra tips the scales at 6.44 inches, which is barely smaller than the 7” size that is generally considered the smaller bounds of a mainstream tablet. Such larger smartphones are often called “phablets,” a remarkably silly neologism that always makes me picture the Beatles using tablets.

Tofel ties this size increase to the increased capabilities of smartphones thanks to better hardware and better network connections. People want to do more with their smartphones—in many cases, the same things they would use a tablet for—or a PC, before tablets came around. And so smartphones are growing to be more like tablets, with sufficient screen real-estate to do whatever the user desires. And as Bluetooth technology has grown ever cheaper, being seen holding something the size of a small dinner plate up to your ear is no longer as much of a concern. The only real limitation is how big of a pocket you have…and for the really huge phones, there’s always a case with a belt clip.

One of those things people do more with their smartphones could include e-book reading. And a 6” screen is certainly better than a 3.5” one for that!

I’ve always held that the line between “smartphones” and “tablets” really is an artificial distinction. A smartphone is exactly a small tablet-form-factor device with a cellular voice and data connection built in. For that matter, the first derisive comments about the iPad were on the order of “It’s just a big iPhone.” They use the same operating system, whether that’s iOS or Android, and can run many of the same apps. When tablets got 3G data access the distinction became even less meaningful. About the only thing you can do with a smartphone that you can’t with a tablet is make actual phone calls, and Voice over IP apps can even make that less of a problem.

I just wish that smartphones were not so much more expensive than tablets. The Nexus 7 tablet starts at $229 for the 16-gig version. The Nexus 5 phone starts at $349. Apparently sticking a cellular voice doohickey inside costs a lot.

]]>http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/smartphones-growing-into-small-tablets/feed/2Review: Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolutionhttp://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/review-dogfight-how-apple-and-google-went-to-war-and-started-a-revolution/
http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/review-dogfight-how-apple-and-google-went-to-war-and-started-a-revolution/#commentsSun, 22 Dec 2013 16:11:23 +0000http://www.teleread.com/?p=103882

The book covers the development of the iPhone and Android phones, touches on the iPad and what it meant, goes over the Apple vs. Samsung patent lawsuit, and then wraps up by looking at how these gadgets have changed the world up to the present day.

You could look at this book as the ideal companion piece to The Battle of $9.99: How Apple, Amazon, and the Big Six Publishers Changed the E-Book Business Overnight. It fills in a great deal of context and shows how Apple got to the point where it felt it needed to kneecap Amazon to enter the e-book business itself—but doesn’t actually go there, which is why you need to read The Battle of $9.99. Dogfight barely mentions the iBooks store, just touching on the three-month period Eddy Cue was given to develop it in the run-up to the iPad launch and at one point quoting from his testimony in the anti-trust trial. Not too surprising, I guess, since that really fell outside the scope of this story.

One curious omission is that it discusses the development of iOS and Android phones, and the iPad, but doesn’t say anything about how Android made the jump to tablets, or the wide variety of Android tablets there are (including the ones that OEMs lock down and customize, such as the Kindle and the Nook). It mentions the iPad Mini, but doesn’t mention that this was a direct response to the popularity of 7” Android tablets. Kind of a pity, really. I was hoping to hear in more detail about why most devices skip over Android 3 and go right from 2.3 to 4.0. It feels like I got the beginning of the Android story, then it jumped to the epilogue. I suppose there was only so much Vogelstein could cover so he just hit the high points.

In some ways it reads like a Greek tragedy. In the beginning, Sergei Brin and Larry Page respected and looked up to Steve Jobs. When they were pressed to take on a more experienced CEO to guide their young company, at one point they said the only CEO they would accept would be Jobs. Since he wasn’t exactly going to leave his job at Apple, this was rather unlikely, but he was flattered enough to befriend them and serve as a sort of mentor. But over time, the relationship would fall apart, leaving an embittered, dying Jobs swearing to his biographer that he would spend every penny he had and fight to his last breath to take Android down.

As I mentioned in the piece yesterday, before Apple and Google came along, the cell phone field was a mare’s nest of dozens of incompatible devices, each with its own different requirements for software. Apple initially didn’t want to get into cell phones at all, but was worried that, as carriers came out with their own “music phones,” they could steal the momentum away from the iPod. The iPod was still in its first year or two of release, and it wasn’t yet clear that it was going to be the breakout hit it became in later years. Meanwhile, Google, who made its revenue from search, was experiencing frustration trying to finagle its search app into the zillions of extant phones. And they were both worried about Microsoft figuring out a way to dominate mobile as well as the desktop.

Apart from cooperating with Motorola on the unimpressive ROKR phone, Apple originally didn’t want to have to deal with the carriers at all, but was gradually worn down by a Cingular negotiator and a number of Apple executives.

“We were spending all this time putting iPod features in Motorola phones. That just seemed ass-backwards to me,” said [Apple exec Steve] Bell, who now is cohead of Intel’s mobile-device effort. He told Jobs that the cell phone itself was on the verge of becoming the most important consumer electronics device of all time, that no one was good at making them, and that, therefore, “if we [Apple] just took the iPod-user experience and some of the other stuff we were working on, we could own the market.”

So they determined to take some designs that designer Jony Ive had for future iPods and make a phone out of them.

Meanwhile, Andy Rubin, CEO of the company “Danger” that produced the Sidekick/Hiptop line of mobile phones (our founder David Rothman took note of it back in 2002), was looking for backing for his Android project to create a mobile phone operating system—which he also saw as the future of consumer electronics technology. As it happened, Larry Page loved the Sidekick, in part because it was the only mobile phone to offer a full-featured web browsing experience at the time. And Google, fed up with trying to make its apps work on everybody else’s phones, was looking to do something similar—so Page decided just to buy Android outright and put Rubin’s team to work on it.

The story of both teams was fraught with strife. On the Apple side, conflicts between the chiefs of the hardware and software divisions responsible for the iPhone often had Steve Jobs have to end up mediating when meetings turned into shouting matches. On the Google side, the conflict was between Rubin’s team, which was kept insulated from the rest of Google in a manner at odds with Google’s corporate culture, and the rest of the corporate culture—notably the division responsible for developing apps for the iPhone, led by ex-Microsoft exec Vic Gundotra.

When the iPhone launched, as the excerpt I linked yesterday showed, it all but poleaxed the Android team. And then when it was actually released, it went on to be successful beyond anybody’s wildest dreams in spite of the original model’s omissions and flaws.

It wasn’t just that the iPhone had a new kind of touchscreen, or ran the most sophisticated software ever put in a phone, or had an Internet browser that wasn’t crippled, or had voice mail that could be listened to in any order, or ran Google Maps and YouTube, or was a music and movie player and a camera. It’s that it appeared to do all those things well and beautifully at the same time. Strangers would accost you in places and ask if they could touch it— as if you had just bought the most beautiful sports car in the world. Its touchscreen worked so well that devices long taken for granted as integral parts of the computing experience— the mouse, the trackpad, and the stylus— suddenly seemed like kluges. They seemed like bad substitutes for what we should have been able to do all along— point and click with our digits instead of a mechanical substitute. All of this captivated not just consumers but investors. A year after Jobs had unveiled the iPhone, Apple’s stock price had doubled.

Then the conflicts broke out company to company after Google first demonstrated its fledgling Android operating system. A livid Steve Jobs demanded Google remove multitouch features or Apple would sue. Google acquiesced, and its first model was nothing to write home about. But paradoxically, this served to draw the carriers apart from AT&T (who had bought Cingular, and hence were Apple’s exclusive carrier partner until 2011) together behind Google, because they saw potential in the operating system and needed something that could compete with the AT&T-only iPhone.

The Apple and Google partnership continued to unravel. Google submitted an app for its new Google Voice service to Apple; Apple rejected it (it was, after all, basically a Trojan horse, that cut the iPhone’s core phone functionality out and handed it over to Google), the FCC looked into it, and Apple ended up backing down and allowing it into the store. Apple attempted to come up with replacements for the apps Google had previously provided, switching Siri over to using Bing and creating a replacement Maps app that was such a fiasco that it led to the original software chief for the iPhone leaving apple. Google added multitouch back into subsequent Android operating system revisions. And Apple started suing Android phone makers, including Samsung. (Apple later won a $1 billion judgment against Samsung. The book doesn’t delve into or even mention the irregularities in that verdict, however.)

The other revolutionary device Apple created was the iPad. Its roots actually hark back before the iPhone, born of Steve Jobs’s irritation with a Microsoft employee spouting off about the tablets they were working on at a party in 2002. The problem was that the technology to make a useful tablet just didn’t exist yet, and they had to shelve the plans until it did.

The iPad debuted to less than overwhelming reaction at the launch event, but once people were actually able to get their hands on it they soon realized exactly why they needed it. Lighter than a laptop, it nonetheless did most of the things people needed laptops for very well, and in a much smaller form factor.

The upshot of all this is, smartphones and tablets have revolutionized and disrupted pretty much all major content-related fields.

The iPod and iTunes changed the way people bought and listened to music. The iPhone changed what people could expect from their cell phones. But the iPad was turning five industries upside down. It was changing the way consumers bought and read books, newspapers, and magazines. And it was changing the way they watched movies and television. Revenues from these businesses totaled about $ 250 billion, or about 2 percent of the GDP.

In the early days of the Internet, companies invested in computer-on-TV devices, assuming that when convergence came, everything would converge through the TV set. They invariably flopped. But now that we have small screens we can always carry with us, with processors good enough and Internet fast enough to stream video in real time, more and more people are choosing to watch TV on those screens, via services like Netflix and Hulu or even disruptive startups like the legally-embattled Aereo. Cable television isn’t viewed as necessary anymore, with these other programming sources available. Streaming services are funding their own TV series, such as Netflix’s House of Cards.

Vogelstein closes with an anecdote about how Larry Page unexpectedly took the podium at a keynote presentation to speak about his vision for the future. Page said:

You take out your phone, and you hold it out, it’s almost as big as the TV or a screen you’re looking at. It has the same resolution as well. And so if you’re nearsighted, a smartphone and a big display are kind of the same thing now. Which is amazing. Absolutely amazing … We haven’t seen this rate of change in computing for a long time—probably not since the birth of the personal computer. But when I think about it, I think we’re all here because we share a deep sense of optimism about the potential of technology to improve people’s lives, and the world, as part of that.

By comparison, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, when asked what he saw for the future, replied, “We believe in the element of surprise.”

In the end, I quite enjoyed Dogfight, even with its curious omissions. It gave me a clearer picture of what went into the phone and tablet gizmos I carry around, and a new appreciation for just how miraculous those little devices are. Who knows what lies ahead? Will Google Glass and the imitators it spawns be the next frontier of mobile computing, or just an interesting curiosity? It should be fun finding out.

This except, from Chapter 2, talks about Google’s reaction to Apple’s iPhone launch. Essentially, they were poleaxed by Jobs’s demonstration. (How little they knew—Chapter 1 covered how that first iPhone demonstration was carefully stage-managed to disguise the fact that their demonstrator phone was half-baked with a pronounced tendency to crash at the worst possible time, and it was nothing short of a miracle that the demonstration came off without a hitch.) At that point, Google had been working on a non-touchscreen, thumb-keyboard phone that was essentially an imitation Blackberry, but the iPhone made it look as bad as anything else on the market before it.

“What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,” [Google engineer Chris] DeSalvo said. “It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it.”

And so Google scrapped its previous design and went back to the drawing board, coming up with something that could better match up against the iPhone. It would be a long, arduous process, but I’ll talk more about that when I review the book as a whole.

The excerpt goes into further detail about what a terrible experience developing for phones was back then. It’s easy to forget now that almost everyone has either an iPhone or an Android that runs incredibly smoothly, but back in the day, the phone marketplace was fragmented in the worst possible way. Before the Android project, Google had been concentrating on trying to get its search apps onto the phones other companies made, but it was a horrible, frustrating process.

The reason few developers built software for mobile phones was because anytime they tried, they lost money. There was no standardization in the industry. Virtually every phone ran its own software and set of applications, meaning software written for a Samsung phone often wouldn’t run on a Motorola phone, which wouldn’t run on a Nokia. Software platforms were incompatible even within companies. For example, there were a handful of different versions of Symbian. Put simply, the mobile industry screamed “money pit” to any enterprising developer. Most stayed away. The most lucrative business was not writing apps for phones. It was owning a testing company that would make sure your apps worked on all the phones in the market. Larry Page has never been shy talking about how frustrating those days were for him and Google.

“We had a closet full of over 100 phones [that we were developing software for], and we were building our software pretty much one device at a time,” he said in his 2012 report to share­holders. In various remarks over the years he has described the experience as both “awful” and “incredibly painful.”

Back in those pre-Android days, Apple and Google were in a partnership born out of the necessity of keeping Microsoft from taking over yet another platform. Steve Jobs had been a mentor to neophyte CEOs Sergei Brin and Larry Page, and Google was one of Apple’s biggest partners in developing the iPhone. Google search, Google Maps, YouTube—these were part of the software suite that let the iPhone work its magic. But at the same time, Google was working on its own smartphone OS, and before too many years went by the two companies would be at each others’ throats.

Here’s an example of a game company doing something pretty clever with mobile technology to increase engagement on its PC game. Gearbox, the wildly creative company behind Borderlands 2, has released a free mobile app for iOS and Android that scans UPC or QR bar codes and associates them with a randomly-generated loot item from that game.

The first time a code is scanned, it randomly generates a loot item; thenceforth, that code is associated specifically with that item so people can tell their friends what to look for. It’s completely agnostic with regard to the price of the item—every bar code is completely random the first time it’s scanned. So scan everything. It also gives each individual their own unique QR code that they can share with their friends to find out what kind of loot item “they” are. In order to move items to the game, players have to use “stamps” that can be found through bar codes Gearbox provides via its social network accounts.

Needless to say, this is going to get a lot of smartphone users wandering around scanning everything in sight like crazy loot-seeking rats who keep hitting that random “reward” button. It adds another layer of “stickiness” to the game, increasing user engagement—and the game is pretty cunningly sticky already. I’ve just been scanning every bottle of shampoo and shaving cream in my bathroom to see if I found anything good. (I didn’t. Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop, though!)

And it provides a lot of great opportunities for cross-promotion. If, say, an energy drink company cuts a deal with Gearbox, maybe their UPCs suddenly start providing excellent loot. Or they could print a QR code good for excellent loot under the bottle cap. (Though the boost they get from this would probably be limited, given that wikis have already started sharing photos of the best codes.)

I’m not sure what value there might be in the bar code database Gearbox will build up out of this, but there might be some. The permissions for installing the app don’t ask for anything but the camera and network access, so it’s apparently not doing anything with your location or other data. Still, they might be able to get some good out of knowing what particular bar codes get scanned the most.

Voice Dream 2.9.2 can handle zipped MP3s as well as audiobooks in Daisy, thanks to help from a Swiss library organization, and navigation and general usability are excellent, just as in the regular text-to-speech mode for ePub files and others.

Dozen of optional voices in common languages work with the app, and my favorite is the UK-accented “Peter” voice ($2 or so).

What’s more, developer Winston Chen says Voice Dream can store thousands of books, and I believe him. No, I don’t know Winston beyond the Facebook and LinkedIn drills and review-related correspondence. As an accessibility advocate, I just love this program despite some minor flaws I’ll mention here. For my purposes at least, it leaves the competition in the dust.

Teachers and librarians should recommend Voice Dream to the appropriate print-challenged people and buy it themselves so they can show students and others how to use it. Voice Dream is also a treat for regular readers like me who enjoy listening to books while exercising. Ditto for commuters. While the voices aren’t 100 percent natural, they come far, far closer than those of several years ago.

Also, the new Voice Dream lets you create a bookmark in the Safari mobile browser, so you can fire up the TTS app from within Web pages of news sites and others and hear them. Here’s what you can copy into the bookmark (ideally placed near the top):

You won’t hear the voices right away, but soon enough. Tap on the arrow at the top of the screen. Choose SmartSave and let the the gears grind. Then hit Done and you’ll return to your Voice Dream library. Please note that the addition to your library might show at the bottom of the list or elsewhere rather than the top. Luckily Voice Dream can sort alphabetically by title and also has a search feature. Pay attention to the title on the Web page before saving, in case you later need to hunt for the page. I’m not sure if I’m overlooking something or if the appear-at-the-top issue is a bug in a much-appreciated experimental feature.

Voice Dream is just the ticket for absorbing long New York Times Magazine features while I tread. While before I could switch from Safari to Voice Dream’s browser to save text as audio, this way is much more convenient.

Now—another tip. To make best use of the MP3 capability, go to the LibriVox and bookmark it within Voice Dream’s own browser. This treasure of a site offers zillions of free audios of public domain books. Don’t forget to bookmark other audio and text sites as well. By tapping the + sign at the bottom of Voice Dream’s opening screen, you’ll see not only the Web browser but also a shortcut to the Project Gutenberg site, and I’d love to see Feedbooks, manybooks.net and the Internet Archive added as well.

Just the same, I can’t anticipate the needs of all LibraryCity readers, and I did want to call attention to App Store remarks, dated November 13, from drakedanecl, a generally happy Voice Dream customer who experienced difficulty with file handling within iTunes FileSharing. Also see his other caveats. That said, he still gave Voice Dream’s current version five stars. Yes!

So kudos once again to Winston (the link goes to NPR’s segment on him). Already Voice Dream can turn PDFs into audio files, and he is now aiming for it also to be able to read the PDFs aloud while keeping the original formatting (Voice Dream already can do TTS of PDF). Stay tuned. If the past repeats itself, he’ll make the forthcoming version available to existing users for free. Me, I’m rooting for the next Voice Dream to let me change the spacing and margins of text for everything, even if the original layout isn’t preserved. Come on, Winston. You really could turn Voice Dream into a good general-purpose e-reader without dissing the accessibility community.

The addition of the ability to read Adobe-DRMed books, especially library ones, would help as well (yes, I dislike DRM as much as the next victim does, but don’t expect it to vanish tomorrow). I hope that Adobe and OverDrive, the biggest supplier of library e-books, will cooperate fully with Voice Dream.

Likewise, Winston can ideally go on to an Android Voice Dream in time, although I can understand his desire to focus now on perfecting the iOS one. I’d do the same in his place.

When most of us aren’t satisfied with the current state of mobile technology, we don’t have any recourse but to hope that someone comes up with something better. But if you’re a high-powered, wealthy Hollywood go-getter, you have a few other options.

GigaOm and AllThingsD are reporting that Hollywood exec Ryan Seacrest was fed up with having to carry two cell phones with him all the time—one for typing and another one for everything else. He just couldn’t get used to the on-screen keyboard in his “everything else” phone, and needed a physical thumb board to type usefully. So he put his money where his mouth was, co-founding a start-up company to produce the Typo, a new type of Bluetooth keyboard case and putting at least $1 million into it.

The case snaps together around an iPhone, covering up the lower part of its bezel including the “Home” button, and features a Bluetooth thumb keyboard reminiscent of the keyboards from Blackberry phones. It will be available for the iPhone 5 and 5s in January at a cost of $99, and will come out for other phones and tablets later.

Personally, I’m happy with Swype on my Android devices, but if I were still on an iPod Touch I might be tempted by this myself. Thumb keyboards do have a few advantages over the virtual version, not least of which is freeing up more screen real-estate since you don’t have a keyboard covering it. The drawback is it’s not terribly useful in landscape mode, of course.

Anyway, kudos to Ryan Seacrest for seeing a problem and funding the solution. Wouldn’t it be nice if more people with money would pay to solve the little problems that irk us all?

]]>http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/to-solve-a-pet-peeve-ryan-seacrest-funds-development-of-bluetooth-keyboard-case/feed/1Does the death of the PC herald a closed-device future?http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/does-the-death-of-the-pc-herald-a-closed-device-future/
http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/does-the-death-of-the-pc-herald-a-closed-device-future/#commentsMon, 18 Nov 2013 03:30:57 +0000http://www.teleread.com/?p=101032

Oh noes! They’re killing the PC! Mass computing devices face the dark future of tablets with restricted operating systems that limit what you can do and what apps you can install! We must all run about in panic!

Here’s what I see happening: Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft all want us to buy appliances, not PCs. An appliance is a closed box. It can only run the operating system they stick you with. It will only run the applications they approve for it. Apple and Microsoft are particularly strict about this.

which shipped with B&N’s fairly useless locked-down custom version of Android on it, I was able to root it with CyanogenMod and put plain vanilla Android on it with about 15 minutes of work. A lot of hardware manufacturers are even working with CyanogenMod to make it easier for it to work on their devices, and CyanogenMod just recently put an app which can automatically root some of the more popular Android devices in the Google Play App Store itself. And one of the features of plain-vanilla Android (but not B&N’s version) is that it can be set to accept sideloaded applications from anywhere, not just those that come from the “official” app store.

The article further generalizes that shrink-wrapped software is “all but dead” and everyone is selling software-as-a-service now. With the movement of all applications to the cloud, our privacy will vanish too, and we’ll all be at the mercy of our new online vassals. Blah blah blah.

It was fun while it lasted, but the convenience of appliances and the cloud is clearly more important to people than the freedom of choice and privacy that came with PCs. I, for one, will be sorry to see it go. Yes, I like the benefits of this new computing paradigm as much as anyone, but I know what we’re losing. And, I, for one, will also still be using my own standalone PCs, servers, operating systems and applications to the bitter end.

Yeah, you do that. It sounds to me like just another buggy-whip manufacturer’s lament that the new horseless carriages are coming in, exaggerating the worst aspects of the change while ignoring that those aspects aren’t.

Those fearless innovators at Apple are at it again, bringing you a product form factor innovation that has already been … ahem … innovated elsewhere, but will probably be repackaged and respun by their hype machine and a legion of uncritical and unaware fans into a home-produced tech triumph. At least, so Bloomberg would have us believe. And yes, I’m speaking as a diehard Apple anti-fanboy, but then I always had this yen to knock holes in the walls of walled gardens …

According to Bloomberg, Apple may soon be bringing iPhones with curved screens to market. Woohoo, curvy. All beveled. Round the edges. How innovative is that. No more of those nasty squared-off corners that came in with the iPhone 4. I’m all hot and flushed and fanning myself at all the excitement here.

As assiduous TeleRead readers will already be aware, this one has already been done. Twice. If not more. But obviously nothing stands in the way of a good corporate pissing contest. I wonder if they’re lining up some kind of retroactive form factor patent infringement lawsuit to go along with this great leap forward in human creativity.

Dropping the sarcasm – with difficulty – I’ll just put one point straight for a little. Apple, if you’re so keen to hold on to your innovation crown, why don’t you give us something genuinely different? Why not pioneer really new territory instead of just retreading other people’s all-too-obvious developments, just to show how far behind the Android curve you are? There are probably a slew of form factors and applications that could be run out and tested in the market these days. Aren’t your R&D budgets big enough these days? Isn’t your fan base loyal enough? Can’t you start to take risks and give us something really worth welcoming, instead of just playing defense all the time? It gets so old. Just like your designs.

Just as a taster, courtesy of iPhoneHacks, here’s a Ciccarese Design iPhone concept with a curved screen. Looks more interesting and challenging than anything coming out of the Cupertino Core currently.

Wired is running an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Fred Vogelstein, looking at how Steve Jobs made the iPad successful when no other tablet ever had been. There’s an interesting parallel with e-readers in this story. No dedicated e-reader had ever been successful before Jeff Bezos pushed the Kindle, and likewise no prior tablet had ever worked until the iPad came along.

The tablet computer was the most discredited category of consumer electronics in the world. Entrepreneurs had been trying to build tablet computers since before the invention of the PC. They had tried so many times that the conventional wisdom was that it couldn’t be done.

Vogelstein attributes the iPad’s success in large part to having the iPhone/iPod Touch platform as a basis. The extremely-popular pocket-sized devices provided the proverbial giant on whose shoulders the iPad could stand. People already had and liked the devices; they understood their interface and knew how to use them. Even if they didn’t understand at the time why they might want an iPad, they wouldn’t have any trouble understanding how it worked once they had it.

Even though some wondered why they even needed a tablet, the genius of the iPad was that, while it didn’t have the same capabilities as a full-sized laptop, it had almost all of the capabilities most people actually ended up using their laptop for, in a smaller, lighter form with better battery life. So it, and the other tablets that followed, effectively killed the laptop as people ditched the heavier, bulkier devices for lighter ones that used less battery power.

And as for media, the iPad didn’t just disrupt one medium like the iPod (music) or iPhone (cellphones).

[The] iPad was turning fiveindustries upside down. It was changing the way consumers bought and read books, newspapers, and magazines — as well as the way they watched movies and television. Revenues from these businesses totaled about $250 billion, or about 2 percent of U.S. GDP.

Google was left scrambling to catch up. (And catch up they eventually did, judging by the current state of Android phones and tablets, but that’s outside the scope of the excerpt.)

Something else I think is interesting to consider is the way the origin of the iPad and the development of the e-book marketplace are inexorably intertwined, perhaps just as much as the Kindle is. If the Kindle created the wider e-book market, the iPad twisted it around by introducing agency pricing. The excerpt even quotes from Apple exec Eddy Cue’s testimony in the trial about how e-books were perceived as a killer app for the tablet. Perhaps that’s fitting, given that e-books are arguably responsible for the development of the technology that led to them in the first place.

The world has been changing a lot. In the 98 years my grandmother has been alive, we’ve gone from cars as rickety novelties on dirt-track roads to polished metal eggs on highways that span the globe; the Wright Brothers’ first flight to putting people on the moon and machinery on Mars. And we’ve gone from mechanical clocks and automated looms as state-of-the-art in information technology to having powerful computer/photo/video terminals in most peoples’ pockets.

Even over the course of my own lifetime, the rate of advance has been remarkable. When I was in grade school. having computers in the schools was an amazing thing. Now I have a cell phone in my pocket that has more computing power than all the computers in the building put together when I was back in high school–thousands or millions of times more powerful than the calculators that sent man to the moon. (And what do I use it for? Yammering on social networks and snapping pictures of my restaurant food.)

I remember one of the popular anime videos of the 1980s, Megazone 23, which was edited into Robotech: The Movie. In both cases, the macguffin of the show was a transforming motorcycle robot with a "powerful database terminal" built into it that could access a central computer and expose secrets that the government didn’t want told. Now we all have "powerful database terminals" in our pockets that can access almost any Internet service that desktop computers can. (And as for exposing government secrets, well, Wikileaks is still out there.) You can’t avoid seeing them all over the place, especially if you take public transit a lot. Even older "dumb" cell phones can access the web in a limited way.

But did you ever consider the role that e-books have played in this tech shift? It is arguably thanks to the Palm Pilot that we have smartphones, e-readers, and tablets at all, and what was the Palm Pilot’s first real "killer app"? E-books. It’s probably no coincidence that many of the first attempts to build something in a tablet form factor were e-readers like the RocketBook. Sure, there were tablet computer attempts out there, but they cost several times as much and were still focused on trying to cram a full-fledged desktop computer into a tablet form factor. We didn’t get really effective tablets until Android and iOS came along for smartphones, then expanded into full-sized tablets.

But in the meanwhile, a flurry of e-readers, like Sony and Astak, came to market buoyed by the new e-ink display technology. We don’t even remember most of them since Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo segmented most of the market between them, but they were out there, reading EPUB, in the years leading up to the Kindle. And why did the Kindle come to rule the world of mobile devices, and Amazon the world of e-books? Because people wanted e-books. They just didn’t know it until Jeff Bezos showed they could be more affordable and convenient than regular ones.

Of course, other electronic media have sprung up over the years. Newspapers and magazines have gone digital, apps like Flipboard make magazine reading a whole new experience, and Instapaper and its ilk reformat web articles into their own easier-to-read-on-small-screens versions. Music and movies have migrated into the cloud as well. But I wonder whether they would have bothered without the example of e-books to show that people did like consuming entertainment and information on mobile devices like that. (The iPod did show people like taking their music mobile, but the Palm Pilot and e-books were there several years earlier.)

As tablets push out dedicated e-readers, e-books might fall by the wayside as more participatory forms of media attract tablet users’ attention away. But I doubt we would have gotten here without e-books to lead the way.

]]>http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/enjoying-tablets-and-smartphones-thank-e-books/feed/5How to get the most out of library ebooks via the right gadget, text to speech, and otherwisehttp://www.teleread.com/ebooks/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-library-ebooks-via-the-right-gadget-text-to-speech-and-otherwise/
http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-library-ebooks-via-the-right-gadget-text-to-speech-and-otherwise/#commentsFri, 18 Oct 2013 22:26:00 +0000http://www.teleread.com/?p=98999

Want to hear text to speech from free library ebooks on your 50-mile commute? Even if you own an Android machine and the usual OverDrive app can’t do “read-aloud” unless audiobooks count?

Also, what if you haven’t even bought an e-reading gizmo for library use, but want to? Which model to go with?

In those cases and others, the guidance here is for you. Most tips will work even with low-cost, no-name tablets. But let’s pay special attention to the new Kindle Fire HDXes. They are among the top choices if you care more about reading than about tech and can stomach Amazon’s oft-proprietary ways.

Written for both library staffers and patrons who are passionate about ebooks, this document has four parts:

1. An outrageously simplified e-buying guide for book-loving library patrons, although you should Google around for other perspectives. If you are cash-strapped, The Digital Reader is a good source of information and opinions on econo tablets and e-readers, including those available second-hand for a pittance on eBay or Craigslist. Here, let’s play up the major brands of tablets, best for novices who want good tech support and don’t mind spending more. My seven-inch HDX arrived October 12—a personal purchase, not a review unit—and I’ve already enjoyed my share of hands-on, which some of the pointers ahead will reflect.

2. “Tips on getting the most out of ebooks from OverDrive, the main source of public library ebooks.”

3. “Psst! Other secrets for Android users: How to enjoy text to speech on ePub library books from OverDrive.”

4. “The 3M Cloud Library app—usable on the Fire and other Android-related machines.” Not just Apple devices and Nooks.

Text to speech is missing, as we know, from even the latest Paperwhite E Ink e-readers. Shame on Amazon, given the minor cost of adding “read-aloud.” Doesn’t anyone there care about the Paperwhite’s AWOL aural benefits for commuters, joggers, other exercise fans and people with disabilities, including elderly library patrons with bad eyes?

But the Fire HDX, available now as a $229 seven-inch model in the basic configuration and soon as an 8.9-incher priced at $379 and up, is finally doing read-aloud in style. Since this is a mini guide, let’s prioritize and focus on the HDXes because they are new and hot and likely to please many book-oriented people even if the devices also have fancy multimedia capabilities.

The HDX line’s positives

English-language users can choose from several built-in voices, including the alluring UK-accented “Amy” voice from the Amazon-owned Ivona (audio samples here).

You are no longer stuck with the somewhat juvenile-sounding “Salli” voice. NonEnglish-language users also will like the expanded selection of voices. What’s more, Amazon is offering voiceover features for blind users.

That is especially true of people already wired into Amazon’s e-bookstore, which sells not just books in text but also Audible talking books with human voices (tips here for HDX owners using Audible). Also, the size of the seven-incher is just right for reflowable text like the usual Kindle formats even thought the 8.9-inch might be better for those reading a lot of PDFs or relying on the HDX for Web browsing.

Furthermore, while the HDX prices may scare many library patrons, they may drop; and less advanced Kindle Fires now go for as little as $139 new. What’s more, your library just might lend out e-readers of one brand or another, as is the case with the new Bextar County BiblioTech library in the San Antonio area. Possibly you’ll find that the HDXes’ screens, tinted a very light vanilla when displaying text in many programs, are a bit more comfortable to read from than the screens of the Nexus machines.

Yes, of course, you can adjust the background colors of reading apps. But you still might appreciate the HDXes’ tint even though Amazon needs to let users change its exact shade.

Why no mention of Nooks? Serious questions exist about their future and B&N’s in general. As for Kobo, many ebook-lovers are understandably down on the company right now. Kobo’s tablets and E Ink machines like the Aura HD are interesting, but the Kobo retail collection lacks the selection of books that Amazon has. So is Kobo hoping to rope in more titles? Just the opposite for now. Amid a porn scare, the company yanked scads and scads of books entrusted to it by small presses (disclosure: my non-pornographic D.C. newspaper novel got pulled despite a rave review by a Yale lit grad in the Washington City Paper). Better filtering of searches and better-designed options for patrons in other respects would have been the real solutions. Perhaps you should purchase a Kobo. But think carefully about it unless Kobo can meaningfully restore its rep after the bungled porn-purge. Who wants to patronize an outfit with such Comstockian tendencies or at least a willingness to pander to those with them?

The big pluses of the HDX rivals like the Nexus 7

Other HDX rivals such as the just-updated Google Nexus 7 are still worth checking out, particularly since most work with library apps and others from the Google Play store, including the app from 3M Library Systems. The rivals don’t lock you in as tightly to one company’s content, given the ease of installing apps from many sources.

While Fires can run Android apps from rivals, including B&N, typical owners find it easier to stick with Amazon. Then they needn’t download apps from third-party stores and jump through other hoops.

Beyond the aforementioned devices, the world of iPads, iPhones, iPods and other Apple mobile gadgets beckons.

An iPad or other Apple device running the Voice Dream program—for which my favorite voice is the UK-accented “Peter”—offers more text-to-speech-related capabilities than the Fire HDXes do. For example, you can use a slider to pick the exact speed of the speech, not just choose from preset options. Moreover, Apple gives you far, far more apps to select from. Clearly Fire tablets are hardly the only game in town. Lots of choices out there, even before Apple unveils the new iPad and iPad Mini.

Just the same, I’m still not happy with the status quo for library ebooks or ebooks in general, and not just because of all the technical and commercial restrictions plaguing the world of e-libraries and ebooks. America needs two national digital library systems, one public and one academic, with a common catalog and software that’s much easier for library users than the current variety. Aided by a national digital library endowment, this initiative could multiple the number of library books and smarten us up in ways that LibraryCity has explained in detail. Even the best e-hardware can’t make up for all the missing titles and the current complexities of using libraries’ ebook services.

E Ink readers

The big pros: low prices on the whole, long stretches between recharges and screens that many people find more comfortable to gaze at, hour after hour. You can buy a used Kindle Keyboard model for around $60. Maybe less.

Cons: Most E Ink screens are six inches or less and you can’t take notes or move around as quickly from place to place as you can with a tablet. Besides, for me, at least, E Ink machines as a rule don’t offer enough contrast between text and background.

E Ink tech most likely will get much better. But for now, tablets will make more sense for most buyers, and not just because of or in spite of the fact they can do far more than just display books. On both the Nexus and the HDX machines, videos from sources such as Netflix can be dazzlingly realistic. Yes, the HDX devices work great with the Netflix and HBO apps and presumably will also do justice to video from suppliers of library content.

Part Two: And now the tips on getting the most out of e-books from OverDrive, the main source of public library e-books…

OverDrive, the King Kong of the library e-book world, has made good progress even now, both in technology and the selection of books that libraries can choose. Questions abound about ebook prices and the onerous terms that libraries often face from publishers. But much and perhaps most of this mess is beyond OverDrive’s control. Enjoy what you can from your local public library’s limited digital selection. Truly it’s a waste to own an HDX and not download the OverDrive app from the Kindle store—and the same applies to “pure” Android machines that can download the app from the Google Play store.

So here are some OverDrive tips and other thoughts for HDX fans and other users of Android or more-or-less-Android devices—followed by some pointers for readers with library systems subscribing to the 3M library service, another major one:

Tip #1: Search here to find libraries near you using OverDrive. Also, see MobileRead’s helpful list of libraries offering OverDrive and other services.

Even if your own library system doesn’t subscribe to such a service, it might have agreements with other systems in near-by cities or counties. In addition, for a fee, some library systems allow out-of-town people to sign up for library cards. Seattle’s charges $85 a year and offers Fire-specific tips. Size of the Seattle e-collection a few years back was several thousand books, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s several times that by now. Bexar County hopes to offer subscriptions to paying out-of-towners, and it already offers 10,000 books, to which it wants to keep adding the same number each year—no substitute for national digital library system, but still a help to those without decent e-choices elsewhere.

Tip #2: You can get the OverDrive Media Console for the HDX or other devices by following the links from this page.The Kindle store identifies the Fire app as for the device’s first generation. But it should work on other Fires, including the HDX series. My HDX, at least, apparently had no trouble with the app for first-gen Fires, assuming Amazon didn’t do a second-gen update behind my back. OverDrive’s FAQ for the app is here. Also see another OverDrive page for owners of HDXes and other Androidish machines.

Tip #3: If your library system uses OverDrive, you’ve got several ways of reading an e-book if the publisher allows.

The simplest way in most cases is to pick a book from your library catalog, go to the download page and choose the Kindle option, which sends you to the Amazon site. Familiarize yourself with the Manage Your Kindle page, from which you can direct files to different Amazon tablets and e-readers.

You can also download ePub files of many books from your library’s pages on the OverDrive server and deal with the not-so-easy Adobe DRM. You may need to specify a new password, if you’re an existing user, since hackers cracked the Adobe system. The big problem with Adobe DRM is that it is so, so easy to lose track of passwords as used in your various devices—cellphones, laptops, desktops, tablets, you name it—and in the end the only solution may be to register a new e-mail address.

A third way is to use OverDrive’s cloud-based service, which has been steadily improving but isn’t quite as easy to use as it could be. The cloud service (screenshots) is a useful fall-back if Adobe DRM ruins your life with, say, its limit on how many devices or applications you can use to read your books. Last I knew, the limit was five. You can use OverDrive’s cloud service without Media Console—it works with popular Web browsers on both mobiles and desktops. So you can download a book at your job on a desktop, then read it at home on your HDX or other portable or stationary device.

Tip #4: It’s easy to turn on your HDX’s text to speech, assuming the publisher’s DRM isn’t in the way, while you’re in a library e-book or any other. Tap the center of the screen. Them hit the Aa/view menu and go to More Settings, Including Text to Speech. Make sure TTS is on. Then tap the left-pointing arrow at the bottom of the screen to return to your ebook. Hit the center of the screen. You’ll see the actual TTS menu pop up at the bottom of the screen. For reading basics, go here within the Fire’s Web-based manual on reading, and for a guide to enhancements, including a brief mention of add-on human narration and machine generated text to speech, go here.

Tip #5: You can’t hear the Amy voice and other nondefault ones within the Fire HDX’s built-in e-book app unless you first set up your Kindle for your choice. Swipe down from the top of the screen. Tap Settings, then Device, then Text to Speech, then Download Additional Voices. If you want Amy, tap on the third choice from the top, English (United Kingdom), Amy. Tap the icon at the upper left to return to the previous Text to Speech menu, then go to Default Voice and specify Amy. You’ll also have to make your way back to change the Default Language—to UK English. If you’re using other regional voices different from the one your Fire came with, you’ll have to do similar adjustments within Language. Keep using the left-point arrow at the bottom of the screen to return to the book you were reading.

Tip #6: Not all library books are voice-enabled for the Kindle HDXs, and not all of the read-aloud ones work with all voices, including Amy’s. In fact, none of the particular library books I tested permitted the Amy voice, just a less distinctive male voice. Does she lack a work visa for the States?

An Amazon support rep tells me that the company will be releasing a software upgrade in a month or so without these limitations, which he blamed on licensing arrangements. True? I haven’t verified this.

What’s the best third-party app? I myself like Moon+ Pro Reader, available to Fire owners from independent stores such as AndroidPIT. What’s more, FBReader is another good choice—you can download FBReader from its site. Then if you’re sufficiently technical, you can add a related text to speech module. Also think about Mantano, which also works with TTS. You can get a free Lite version via Good eReader. Alas, the Amazon store carries Mantano but blocks Fires from downloading it. Come on, Jeff Bezos. Open up! Most people will still favor the Kindle e-reading app, not wishing to bother with anything else, and beyond that, the Fire hardware and Amazon e-book prices are good enough for you to stop playing these silly games with consumers. Now—if only the Kindle would do nonDRMed ePub, an even better good way to show openness!

Tip #8: Before you install a third-party app not sold by Amazon—Moon, FBReader or Mantano, for example—go to your device’s security setting and allow installation of third-party apps. Swipe downward from the top of the screen. Hit Settings, then Applications. Allow installation of apps from unknown sources.

Careful. Not all stores are necessarily safe from infected software, and some gurus would say simply to avoid the third-party ones. Besides AndroidPIT, another possibility is SlideMe.org. No guarantees about SlideMe, either, and with both, you run the risk of some applications getting confused by the eagerness of the Fires at times to direct you to Amazon’s own store. But to me, the odds are good of no infection threats, given the popularity of the two sites. Furthermore, evil software has hit even places like Google Play. On the Kindle Fire HDX, I’m running Antivirus and Mobile Security, a security app from the official Amazon store. OK. You’ve been warned.

Tip #9: If you’re like me and wish that the HDX machines offered optional all-text bolding of ebooks for better visibility, then speak up to Amazon’s tech support or email Jeff Bezos personally (or whoever helps handles his correspondence).

The screenshot shows where Amazon could easily add a Bold button that worked with all fonts. Put it above or to the left of “More Settings.” An A button on the same screen could send people to a menu with other “advanced features,” such as variable paragraph spacing. Look, Jeff—I know you want your software kept simple for newcomers. But in time they’ll be experienced and will want more flexible software than the current Kindle variety.

Fans of E Ink machines have correctly pointed out that these ereader-only gizmos can help you focus on the book you’re reading. But with the Quiet Mode reaching the HDXes—an equivalent was already on a Kobo tablet, if I recall correctly—this argument isn’t quite as strong as before.

Tip #11: Amazon’s new Mayday feature lets you call up a tech support staffer and even see her or him via video, but keep your expectations realistic.

The Mayday reps I reached didn’t have actual Fire HDXs in front of them and had to pass me on to other people, contactable by phone but not the magic button. On the positive side, Mayday lets Amazon tech reps walk you through screens related to the issues you call about. Yes, the screens on your own HDX.

An aside: Might this be the future of library reference or library tech support or mixes of the two? And how much of this will happen at the local level and how much at the national one? Imagine a reference librarian moving a cursor on a user’s screen, or drawing a line. Local librarians could become trusted guides to patrons, not only through Mayday features but also personal blogs—with reader advisories—in some cases. Talk about a way for libraries to differentiate themselves from Google and not just help students with searches but also teach them to do a better job of it!

On-screen appearances would also be good for answering social-services-style queries from patrons who couldn’t make it into the library in person. No substitute for face to face in these situations if possible. But the more of a personal touch, the better—even if it’s from afar.

Amazon potentially could serve as a contractor to help provide the technological infrastructure, but I’d feel better with at least several companies involved to avoid over reliance on one.

Let the selection process, of course, be both transparent and impartial!

Part Three: Psst! Other secrets for Android users: How to enjoy text to speech on ePub library books from OverDrive

If you own a Kindle Fire HDX, you can hear text to speech on many if not most library books. But what if you’re using a “pure” Android machine, where the Kindle app lacks TTS? People smart and patient enough are still in luck if titles are also available in ePub.

1. Make sure text to speech is enabled from the settings of your Android operating system. And if you want a voice sounding better than the built-in ones, consider adding the Ivona speech engine and a voice of your choice, such as Amy. For now, at least, they’re free at the Google Play store. I’ve also enjoyed the Acapela speech engine, with the “Peter” voice, and the Google store offers both brands.

2 . Delete the OverDrive application—not the same thing as the service, of course—from your Android machine if it’s already there. Or instead follow Laptop Magazine’s tips for changing default app launches in Android. The idea is to get files downloaded from your public library to open up in a file manager rather than OverDrive. I myself did a simple wipe-out on my Nexus 7, although I may later restore OverDrive. I’m just a bit annoyed that the OverDrive app, despite many improvements, still lacks text to speech (different from the ability to play audiobooks, which the app does have).

3. Install the Astro file manager or an equivalent from the Google Play store. The idea is to get files downloaded from the library to open up in Astro rather than OverDrive.

4. Next install the Mantano application. It offers both text to speech capabilities and the ability to deal with Adobe DRM. Alas, the process can be a bit convoluted. Read the official word from a Mantano support rep, who, however, didn’t have the whole story.

5. Try to stick to the Chrome browser for the actual file downloads. My Boat browser didn’t appear to work.

6. From Chrome’s download directory, use Astro to move the book file to one called BOOKS or whatever your choice is. Somehow a file downloaded directly from your library won’t work, at least probably not. You need to copy or move it or otherwise execute a “save”-style process. Oh, the mysteries of bytes or least of Adobe DRM, Mantano and the rest!

7. Fire up Mantano app and tap on the Explore icon at the bottom of the screen. Then go to the directory with a copy of the file downloaded from your public library—the file name will end with .epub. Click on the file, and the book will appear within Mantano.

Note: It’s also possible that the Nook’s built-in experimental text to speech will work with OverDrive books—I haven’t tested it. But last I knew the speech quality was inferior. You’re better off with Mantano and a decent voice like Amy’s.

Part Four: The 3M Cloud Library app—usable on the Fire and other Android-related machines

Perhaps because of Amazon’s ties with OverDrive, its store doesn’t offer the 3M Library app for the Fire, but you can find it elsewhere.

But first, as in the case of FBReader and other applications not at the Amazon or Google store, be sure your system is set up to nonauthorized apps.

3. Look within the download menu of the Fire’s Silk Browser and click on the just-downloaded file. Do the equivalent on other machines.

4. As a last resort, consider reaching an Amazon rep about the installation of the 3M app. While this isn’t exactly high on Jeff Bezo’s list of corporate priorities, the rep just might take pity and help you, as has happened in at least one instance mentioned in an Amazon Fire forum.

Unclear about something above or think I should tweak anything (very possible since as of mid-October, this post is definitely a “first edition”)? Reach me via dr@librarycity.org or the comment box, and I’ll do my best to respond within the limits of a busy schedule, even if you won’t see me, Mayday style, in a video box on the screen. If I’m not able to get to the question, perhaps other visitors can oblige.

Meanwhile, yes, I know this post is over 4,000 words long, and even if I left off the buying advice, it still would go on forever. Sick of all the complexities here? I am! Let’s think about the need for those two intertwined national digital library systems where librarians, rather than vendors with clashing technical standards, will be in control. I’d like librarians and users to be able to care more about books, art, ideas and entertainment in general—and less about the Tower of eBabel, DRM survival tips, text-to-speech advice and other ugly distractions. Please understand that the headline above the post (“How to get the most out of library ebooks…”) refers to technical matters, not actual content ones. To address the latter concerns, we need librarians and teachers able to focus on substance.

This is a slightly old story, but I thought it was worth following up on when I had the chance. A few weeks ago, Apple quietly added a new feature to its iOS app store. It used to be that when you had hardware too old to run the latest version of an app, and you lost the version of it you had, you were out of luck.

After OS 7 came out, for example, when I tried to update my 1st-generation iPad’s Zite app, I was told that the new one required OS 7. So if I had accidentally lost Zite in a device crash and rebuild, I would have had no way of downloading the version of it I could use; the version for OS 7 was all there was. This is more than just theoretical for me. I had lost a lot of applications from my old first-generation iOS 3.1.3 iPod Touch that way. Skype, Twitter, Facebook, the Kindle and Barnes & Noble e-book readers…the current versions can’t be downloaded to my iPod Touch.

But lately something changed, at least for the iOS operating system—because a user of a 2nd-generation iPod Touch happened to notice he was now presented with the opportunity to download the last compatible version of an app from the app store.

This is a pretty big sea change in terms of Apple’s policies toward older hardware. For as long as Apple has been making hardware, it’s been known for burying the software necessary for older versions of its operating systems, in the name of requiring people to move to newer ones. Try downloading the versions of applications required for older versions of OS X, for example, and you’ll get nowhere. The X server you need for Jaguar if you happen to have an old Wall Street Powerbook that uses it? Ha, good luck with that. Buying an older iOS device was an exercise in frustration because Apple’s iOS development environment is essentially set up to force any new software versions developed in it to require the latest version of iOS.

But suddenly, older iOS hardware might not be such a bad deal after all, because you can now get older software for it. If you got an older iPhone or iPod Touch, you can still download some versions of popular e-book apps onto it. (And social networking, etc.) Which provides even more economical e-reader device opportunities. For instance, you could get a used but fully-functional 8 GB 2nd-generation iPod Touch for as little as $55 from Amazon, and maybe even less on eBay.

Of course, this won’t necessarily work for all applications. Sometimes, there are API changes on the back end that aren’t reflected in newer versions. For example, the latest pre-OS7 version of the Reeder RSS reader is locked to the now-defunct Google Reader. It’s only the OS 7 version that can hook up to Feedly or other sources.

Also, there seems to be a limit to how old the hardware in question can be. While I am able to get the “download the last compatible version” prompt from apps on my iPad, the iPod Touch just refuses even to try to download. I guess you must have to have at least OS 4 to take advantage of this new feature, which means my Touch (and, I expect, first-generation iPhones) would still be out of luck. (Not that this is a huge problem for me, since I finally got fed up and moved over to Android.)

Sunday morning seems like an appropriate time to mention this story. The New York Times has taken notice of YouVersion, a free social-networking-enabled e-Bible application for mobile devices. Built by evangelical megachurch LifeChurch.tv, the application is a non-denominational electronic Bible with access to hundreds of translations in hundreds of languages, including the NIV.

The article covers a lot of themes we’ve talked about in relation to other e-book initiatives. For example, the value of free:

“We have a generation of people that can’t fathom paying 99 cents for a song that they love,” [YouVersion creator Bobby] Gruenewald said, “and we were asking them to pay $20 for a book that they don’t understand.”

While some Bible publishers are concerned about their works being available completely free, they also see the availability as beneficial and potentially driving sales of printed versions of their books. (And not all versions can be downloaded for offline reading. Some, such as the NIV, are only available while connected to the Internet.) It also provides aggregated information about readership patterns, much as the Kindle does of regular books for Amazon, that YouVersion can share with the Bibles’ publishers to help them understand what parts of their books people look over most.

I downloaded the app to my iPad and have been playing around with it. It seems like a pretty decent way to read the Bible, if all you’re looking for is reading passages for your own interest, or following along with your pastor in church. It also allows you to share your favorite verses with friends on Twitter or Facebook. But unlike the Biblical websites I looked at here, it doesn’t offer much recourse to the serious scholar. If you’re looking for commentaries and analysis, or the ability to compare multiple versions in parallel, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

One of the reasons I haven’t been writing as much lately here is that I have another part-time writing gig now that takes up much of my attention. I’m the “PC Expert” for Answers.com’s Experts program, contributing 500- to 600-word articles on subjects pertaining to computers, tablets, and related issues. It’s a very different sort of writing than I do for TeleRead, as those articles have to be neutral in tone and informative or instructional, rather than editorial.

Along the way, I have managed to fit in a number of posts relating to topics relevant to TeleRead. A number of them are fairly basic and stuff that long-time TeleRead readers would know already, but I figured it was worth calling them out here. Needless to say, feel free to share them or pass them on to people who might find them helpful.

I’ve also done some about online shopping, blogging, and writing, but I’m going to save those for another post. This one is getting pretty link-tastic already—when I looked, I found I had more relevant articles than I remembered!

If anyone wants to suggest any other topics I might write about, please do! I’m always looking for more inspiration. Figuring out what to write about is really my biggest problem for my Answers writing.

I also have Twitter and Facebook presences where I share new articles as I write them, though I use Facebook more often.